Lurssen delivers 78m Odisea, RWD's first full-yacht design

One studio, inside and out

Lurssen handed over Odisea in March 2026 and did not keep her home for long. On 13 March she left the yard at Lemwerder and set course for London on her maiden voyage. She is built in steel with an aluminium superstructure, runs to five decks and measures 78.2 metres for a volume of 2,397 GT. The project ran as Ace 21 through the build: her keel was laid at Stahlbau Nord in Bremerhaven in March 2022, she reached her technical launch in May 2025, and she spent the summer on North Sea sea trials before handover.

What sets the delivery apart is who drew her. British studio RWD is credited with both the exterior and the interior, the first time it has handled a complete yacht for Lurssen, while the naval architecture stayed in house at the yard. For an owner, one studio holding the whole design means the profile outside and the rooms inside answer to a single eye rather than being stitched together from two briefs. Peter Lurssen has described the collaboration as one that let the yard push into new territory.

A brief built around the water

The space RWD leads with is the Beach House, a glass-encased lounge on the main deck that opens on three sides through three-metre sliding doors. Slid back, it turns the aft main deck into one room that runs from the interior straight out to an al fresco deck and a teak-lined pool. The point is height, or the lack of it: guests sit almost level with the sea instead of a storey above it, which is where a lot of the newest owner briefs now want the social heart of the boat.

The rest of the layout keeps to that outdoor logic. The foredeck carries a sports court marked for basketball and pickleball and cleared for yoga or pilates, and the sundeck holds a Jacuzzi, a bar, a fire pit and an open-air table laid for as many as 20. There are two exterior cinemas, a wellness area and a watersports zone rigged for diving and fishing. It reads as a brief written for time at anchor and time outside, not for the formal grand saloon that once anchored a yacht this size.

Lean volume, cleaner stack

One figure is worth pausing on. At 2,397 GT on a 78.2-metre hull, Odisea is comparatively lean, carrying less enclosed volume than many yachts of similar length. That is a choice, not a shortfall: the owner took a long, low profile and open deck over the maximised interior box, which changes how she looks at anchor and how efficiently she runs between anchorages.

Under the styling the engineering stays quiet in another sense. Twin diesels turn conventional shafts, and a compact exhaust routes through a patented selective catalytic reduction system that cuts nitrogen oxide, so the yard could keep the funnel slim without dropping emissions control. For anyone shopping at the top of the custom market, Odisea is a clean read on the current brief: one studio running the whole design, and a budget aimed squarely at outdoor life at the waterline.